Festival of the Wheel Castlemaine

The weekend of 25th-26th October 2008 will host an exciting  inaugural event for Castlemaine. A major fun, fitness and environment event in and around the town for all sorts of cyclists will usher in the first annual Festival of the Wheel’.

The Mount Alexander Sustainability Group, or MASG, which was established in 2006 and boasts nearly 800 members, is organizing the multiple rides, the night of entertainment and the Don KRC Family Day in the Botanical Gardens as a fundraiser to support its efforts to cut our greenhouse gas emissions and build a more sustainable world.

Over the past few years, bike riding has boomed in Castlemaine. As well as road and trail riding in abundance, bikes are now used for carrying freight (including bread delivery), passengers (via the new MASG trishaw) and for getting kids to school on the front or back. Riding to work has also become increasingly popular. The Festival will build on this trend and stage a terrific weekend of cycling for all levels and types of riders. There will also be great entertainment on the Saturday night and Sunday.

Don’t be a despiser of small beginnings

 

One of the great joys of cycling is being free to roam the open roads if one so chooses and this is something that we should never take for granted in this City or for that matter Australia.  We are truly a blessed City and Nation to be able to experience such freedom. Another aspect of the joys of cycling is other people of like mindedness that you can meet on the road any where at anytime. Everyone is a great achiever because they have made the step of “having a go” a great Aussie tradition and legacy of our fore fathers.
When coming across what is evident of a rider that is new to the experience when you come up beside them the conversations usually go something like this . The shocked rider who has slowed down might well be thinking and hoping that you will keep going and not spoil the moment of courage it may well have taken to be sharing the road with other vehicles, After assuring that you are happy to ride at their pace for a while and have no motive but to share a moment in time. The speed might pick up again but not to the point where conversation is not undertaken with ease.  “G’day how are you going?” response “Oh hec where did you come from?” “I am not as good or fit as you must be” which now opens up a wider conversation to address their perception. 

The subtle differences of choosing an ensemble

Awareness of product choice in today’s market place for manufacturers is very much being able to match the expectations of the end user. The motor vehicle market is a great example of this by making car’s appeal to the age, life style and perception of the status that the choice of make and model does in setting the individual apart from others. Cycling components or as to referred in the world of cycling the “ensemble” which is normally the cranks set, chain rings, rear cluster, chain, the gear changers/brake handles and hoods, and front and rear derailer, front and rear brake assemblies along with hubs are a point of passion for the more discerning cyclist selection of brand name. Selection of rims can be another individual choice of likes and dislikes or purely based on budget. There are three main players in road cycling for making a selection of choice of ensemble and there is as much debate at the coffee stop over what is best as to who may have ridden the best on the day.

Tools to measure your progress

One of the first tools any cyclist considers is a basic Speedo which will measure the distance travelled the time taken average speed and top speed. These are a great encouragement to monitor your progress and improvement over a set course. Many riders utilise the same tried and proven route to train on or just to commute to work on. Keeping track of the average speed and top speed for a distance can have many variances such as the riders health on the day to a side, head or tail wind that can assist or hinder the progress. Over a few weeks one can see a pattern and makes some mile stone pegs in the sand to measure against. 

The bicycle built for two

David spends about an hour a day pedalling, but he hasn’t been outside on a bike since he was a kid and had enough vision to see the driveway of his home. 

When the Lions Club of Strathfieldsaye recently donated a brand new tandem to Vision Australia, David was first down at the Tom Flood track to try it out.

First rule with a new machine is get to know your bike. So he went over every inch of it and asked questions about everything. Finally he decided: enough of the theory, let’s test this out!

Eye care not just a fashion statement

Think cycling eyewear, think ‘cool’ and ‘style’. It’s easy to presume they’re simply a fashion-driven accessory. Not so. Cycling, like any extensive outdoor activity, subjects participants to high UV (ultra-violet) levels, even on cloudy days. Prolonged UV exposure can make eyes red and glare-sensitive, at worst it can lead to cataract and macular degeneration. The modern ‘wrap-around’ eyewear style closely associated with cycling – as well as other outdoor sports such as cricket and boating – is as functional as it is fashionable. The key is all-round eye protection. Not only does the design offer a 100-percent UV barrier and glare filtration, but the lenses offer a shape and strength to effectively deflect stones, dust and even insects. More recently eyewear manufacturers have acknowledged the growing need for spectacle prescriptions to be incorporated into cycling glasses. For those with focusing disorders such as myopia (short-sightedness), a prescription can be made into interchangeable-style wrap lenses in all of the usual tint varieties. For higher prescriptions, the frames can accommodate a lightweight ‘insert’ which carries the prescription behind the main lens. Gone are the days of bending conventional glasses under helmets or clip-on sunglasses. Modern cycling eyewear is now a huge investment for the big brand names. So it’s no surprise, then, that new technologies emerge from extensive research and development programs. Cheaper brands can only attempt to replicate the technology and will often be a poor substitute for the real thing. As the old adage goes, you get what you pay for.

Being prepared for time in the saddle

Preparing for a long distance ride such as the Bay in a Day requires a base of sustained fitness that can be draw on. Time in the saddle is your preparation; most riders have the fitness but not necessarily the conditioning of the mind and body (bottom back and neck condition). 
Anybody that undertakes to ride in excess of 100Klm must be able to count the cost and know how to prepare and take account of their recovery; crossing some of these boundaries prior to a long ride gives some insights to building confidence. A simple philosophy that under pins such preparation is: If you have been doing things that work for you then be at peace and not seek too many improvements. Learn to break down the ride into achievements and celebrations of reaching each set goal.
If you have prepared right the objective of a long ride does not change much. You ride to enjoy the company of others, to increase your fitness and increase your health and achieve a sense of being an over comer of past mountains of the mind to reach set goals and to celebrate the achievement of all you share the ride with.

Cycling Lanes for co-existence of shared road users

Photo by Vanessa Barkla

Bike lanes are a great place for cyclists to make safe passage with other shared road users. Or are they? It would seem there is a large proportion of the general public have the view that cyclists should keep to the bike lane as this is a designated area allocated for their sharing of the road.  What happens when the bike lane dissolves and suddenly riders and other shared road users are in the same space? What about when riders chose to ride on a road where there is no designated bike lane or a marked road verge that allows for cyclists to have a small part of the road or even a centre line marked to show what space is to be shared? Is this wrong that riders should use this road?
These are all factors that have for’s and against and there is no right or wrong answer but the desire to co-exist as legal entities on the road space.  There are a number of other issues that cyclist’s face that can frustrate motorists as to why some cyclists find it difficult to keep in a bike lane.

“Look left, look right, look bike” for safe entry into merging traffic

Look left look righ look bike

No matter how brightly you dress use lights of the highest brightness if you are not in the line of vision and the thinking of the approaching motorist  we are vulnerable as cyclists. Being predictable certainly helps being seen along with wearing bright clothing as well as the lights that shine brightly and flash in a manner to draw attention of other shared road users all make for a high priority . Being predictable in where we place ourselves on the road surface so that we can be readily seen and see others ourselves allows for taking care and attention of the detail of approaching road user’s speed and their mannerisms’ to detect whether they are being cautious or lack thereof.